Together RPG - Might & Magic III - 6/1-8/1

[Ack]

https://www.gog.com/game/might_and_magi ... ed_edition

Is this the only way to get it digitally right now?

I don't see III in that bundle?

The pack includes the first six games from the Might and Magic series: Might and Magic: Book 1, Might and Magic 2: Gates to Another World, Might and Magic 3: Isles of Terra, Might and Magic 4&5: World of Xeen, bonus adventure Swords of Xeen and Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven

[noiseredux]

yeah I read the page wrong at first - I thought this was a pack of 6-9 cuz those 4 were listed on the right side of the page.

[Stark]

Bought it on GOG. Skimmed through the manual, the writing in it is so terrible, I had to stop and just skim. I would've eaten this up on the way home from EB as a kid though. Love that the manual is really just a poorly told story though and not an actual "how to play this game."

[MrPopo]

Yeah, the manual is definitely more fluff. It does mention the classes and races and what they're good for, but the biggest point of frustration for everyone is going to be how equipment is handled.

With armor you can see how much it benefits you by checking your character sheet, but you wouldn't be able to see any other benefits. But weapons you are completely in the dark. The only way to determine the stats of a weapon are to take it to a shop and Identify it for a fraction of its sell price. Generally these costs are pretty nominal, but it's frustrating when you have a backpack full of gear and want to get it sorted onto your characters before selling the rest. The other option is to figure it out yourself using the RPGClassics shrine link in the opening post; their item section lists all the base equipment and the enhancements of the affixes.

The fact that you even have an identify option at all is a big deal for this era, though. Usually you just had to either go with what was in the manual or guess (since not all manuals had weapon stats).

[MrPopo]

My journey through Terra continues. I headed to castle Whiteshield, got a couple of quests, and solved the riddle that gave me access to the dungeon. Turns out, I'm not nearly high enough level for that dungeon. The hidden walls are too tough for me to bash down and one trap killed my weaker party members. So I hightailed it out of there.

I ended up mapping the entirety of the western island that you start on. So that's all of A1-4 and B1-4. This included finding castle Bloodreign and town Wildabar. The caverns under Wildabar weren't too difficult and I gained another clue as to how to solve one of my quests involving magic seashells. There were several dungeons on the island that I haven't explored yet, however. A few were locked with keys and the others I elected to pass on until I had finished the overworld. Since the overworld has several stat buffing spots I plan to use those before going into a dungeon based on my experiences in the first dungeon. I've also acquired the Walk on Water spell, so I can presumably use that to start exploring the other islands. I also discovered a teleporter to the southeast island; fortunately it was two way and I immediately headed back.

My current plan is to start delving the dungeons of the western island. Once those are finished I'll look into exploring some new islands.

Edit: I'm comparing this with my MM1 playthrough and this game is SO MUCH MORE approachable. The power curve is smoother and the automap + a change in map philosophy takes away some of the drudgery that happened when I was on the MM1 overworld.

In MM1 the overworld was a dungeon; they simulated mountain passes with walls and forests blocked visibility but could be walked through (essentially hidden doors). It looks pretty neat when you have a full map put together but it also can make the actual mapping process quite tedious.

By contrast, MM3 expects you to step on every tile (hidden treasure abounds). You might need some skills or spells to pull that off, but once you've got them you can just start sweeping up and down. I've also noticed the interior maps are much easier to play through than MM1's. I attribute this to a change in the map rule.

Something I've noticed in first person dungeon crawlers is that there are two rules that a map can be constructed under. The first is that walls are lines that separate the squares you walk in. So in a given map you can create a full labyrinth that visits every square available, no matter the layout. The second rule is that walls are separate squares themselves. A modern game that fits under this rule is the Etrian Odyssey series. These create more realistic dungeons because if you're imagining a cave excavation you're not going to have thin partitions between corridors. That's actually a good metaphor for the two. The first rule is how you would build a man-made structure (so your maps look like architectural diagrams) and the second rule is how you would excavate a cave system. But the most notable thing about the latter is it forces certain behaviors on the actual dungeon construction. The various twists and turns greatly constrain what you can do with the remaining space.

I've also noticed that MM3 is not restricted in its map sizes. While so far the towns and the town caverns have fit on a single screen when I pull open the auto map the first dungeon I went into was larger than a single screen of the auto map. The overworld is naturally larger than a full screen but it also appears the individual cells that make up the overworld are larger than a single screen. By contrast, MM1 had a fixed map size for every single map in the game.

[MrPopo]

So this game is actually pretty addicting. I spent the day doing a lot of spelunking through dungeons and generally getting in over my head. But I'm actually better about figuring that out and bailing out early. Many of the dungeons have interesting designs that require good usage of your spells to get through, while others have riddles that require a decent amount of thought. I've successfully cleared two dungeons so far, with minor forays into a few others.

The first dungeon I cleared included an area where I could trade in Kwatloo Coins I've been picking up in exchange for an Accuracy, Strength, or Endurance increase. I've ended up going for accuracy as I had been finding that many of my attacks were making a whiffing sound. That turned out to be a good thing as I'll explain later on.

The second dungeon I cleared had a large puzzle to follow a series of clues to do math operations until I came up with a final "magic" number. This gave me a large amount of experience and in the course of my explorations I discovered a bunch of crystals that would improve my Intelligence, Personality, or Luck stats. The best part, though, was that the NPC I gave the magic number too offered to recharge the crystals if I give him 5000 gems. So this will be a great area to get my caster's SP pools up to help make up for their half SP growth due to being hybrid classes.

The other couple of dungeons I tried on the main island were kicking my ass, so I decided to take an NPC up on his offer to go to Swamp Town. This was fairly easy to clear out and the cavern underneath included some nice items. But the real prize was a pair of jewels at the end of a couple of difficult paths. These jewels increased my strength and endurance to extremely high levels; now everyone is sitting at 50+ on both stats (at the beginning of the adventure you might roll an 18 or 19). And while I was exploring the town I was very nicely given the password for the fifth town. The cavern underneath I elected to hold off on trying to clear; the enemies are completely immune to physical attacks and I wasn't ready for the massive attrition war with my spells to get through.

I tried leaving the town to discover it was on the aptly named Isle of Fire. The entire town was sitting on a lava flow, so I started taking damage on my first step outside. I hightailed it back into town and headed back to Fountainhead.

I ended up gaining 4 or 5 levels over the course of this journey as well as a large number of powerful items. So I'm going to try some of the dungeons I'd passed up. I especially want to try the one with the Iron Wizards inside.

[Ack]

Is it true that the dungeons of M&M3 feature permanently for the enemies, so you can clear a few, leave, and come back later to finish off the leftovers?

[MrPopo]

Is it true that the dungeons of M&M3 feature permanently for the enemies, so you can clear a few, leave, and come back later to finish off the leftovers?

Yup. The overworld too, though on the overworld you might need to locate a special monster lair square to stop the spawns. When you find one you get the option to destroy it and an experience bonus if you do.

The ability to clear out a dungeon (or portions of it) makes traversing things much less painful than in ones with random encounters.

[Ack]

And lo, did Ack begin the playing of the Might & Magic III.

Yes, I finally finished the other titles I was playing and booted this up. After a bit of finagling with resolution options to find one that worked for me, I got going and immediately wiped the original party to put in a replacement team. I'm calling it the B-Team, folks too crazy to go in with the original set but who are chomping at the bit for some action:

ACK, level 1 Human Fighter from lands to the distant north. He revels in slaughter and eats the eyes of his enemies to gain their power.

POPO, level 1 Half-Orc Barbarian and borne from the unholy union of an orc and a goat(we never said what the other half was). He crushes his enemies and then crushes them again.

FASTBILLY, level 1 Dwarven Robber, cast from the great mountains of the east. He spits lightning and craps thunder, mainly because he's got a bad penchant for the gut rot whiskey.

BONE, level 1 Gnomish Cleric, who studied the ways of the gods in the west. He's a sadist who likes to heal the rest of the party only for them to go get hurt again. He's useful like that.

KEY, level 1 Elven Sorceress, who was schooled in the central plains. She's partly in the party because she can wreck violent magical death on people like hellfire, and partly to stave off claims of sexism.

NOISE, level 1 Gnomish Ranger, who comes from parts unknown. He wears an eye patch as a result of a horrible accident, probably involving masturbation.

With this band of riffraff, ruffians, and douche bags...and Key too(nobody gets to talk bad about Key), I set forth from the inn and immediately began exploring the starting town. In bashing down a wall, I ended up in a scuffle with a couple of Moose Rats and...PARTY WIPE!

Well shit.

I reloaded my game(I saved after character creation), ventured out of town, and fought a bunch of goblins and orcs. But Key died(she's only got like 4 hp max), so I reloaded because I don't know how to resurrect folks yet and I'm sure it's expensive. This is a party of misers and thieves too after all. Eventually I managed to walk around a bit without anyone dying and relying heavily on my magic to keep my weaker teammembers afloat. I've done really nothing of repute yet, and the toughest thing I've killed was a magic mushroom. But Fastbilly has managed to reach level 2 at least, so there is that. I look forward to continuing to fight hordes of hideous monsters and build up a few more levels. Then it's time for a quest or something. At least I think so.

[Exhuminator]

In bashing down a wall, I ended up in a scuffle with a couple of Moose Rats and...PARTY WIPE!

That's what you get for not putting EX in your team.